


Rise Up and Be Strong

by arenoseAnima



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arenoseAnima/pseuds/arenoseAnima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, In Which a Yellow Blood Inside an Afterlife Sphere Explains Events That Just Occurred From His Perspective to a Deceased Blue Blood and a Green Blood Who Are Moirails.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rise Up and Be Strong

**Author's Note:**

> musical accompaniment: Navigator, by the Pogues

“Here,” she says, leaning over the table with a teacup nestled in her palm, and tips the cup towards you. You touch your lips to the rim of the porcelain, so tender and fragile; she carefully pours some tea into your mouth. It’s quite sugary with plenty of milk, just how she likes it, and you smile as you lean back and swallow. It had been a long time since you tasted Nepeta’s tea, and now you’ve had enough tea parties to last the rest of your unlife. She plops back down into her wicker chair, wreathed in smiles as she sips from her own teacup. “Good, huh?”

“Yes,” you tell her. You wonder if you deserve to touch her after everything that’s happened, but you remember how  she smiled when she saw you again -

(You knew what had happened as soon as you woke up in your respiteblock, the morning sun just stretching its arms over the horizon. How could you forget how you had failed her, even with the temptations of your memories of life surrounding you? You had claimed that the color of her blood never meant anything, that you would love her and protect her no matter what came to pass, but you had knelt and she had paid the price for your foolishness. You didn’t need to see her dead body to know she was gone too, the life choked out of her by the highblood. Your first order of  business had been to find her, forget grief and agony and looking at your shining white eyes in the mirror: you _had_ to find her. It was a simple matter, of course; you saw her bubble from miles and miles away, and _nothing_ would keep you from her anymore.

And when you got there, you had no idea what to say. You choked on apologies, wept like a grub, prostrated yourself before her and begged for her forgiveness. She called you her silly kitten and a big sweaty... rear, and she pulled you to your feet, and marveled at your whole horns, and wrapped her arms around you just like she always would when both of you were living. You sobbed into her hair at the sight of her blank eyes, but at least you were together again. That was all that mattered.)

\- and you reach across to ruffle her hair. She purrs and rubs her head against your hand, then ducks out from underneath and hops out of her chair, running around the table so she can leap into your lap. You catch her easily and hold her against your chest; she rests her head there, smiling widely.

The smile lasts for far too short a time. “Equius?” she whispers, eyes still closed.

“Yes, Nepeta?”

“If we’re here, then where’s everyone else?”

You think about that for a minute. “I am not sure,” you say, your thumb making slow circles on the back of her neck.

“They have to be dead.” She turns her head to bury her face in your chest, bunching your shirt up with her hands. “Because I...”

“Hush.” You stroke your hand down her back, again and again. “You did your very best, and that is all anyone could ask of you.”

She peeks one eye out of your shirt, her brows furrowed. “That’s what _I_ told _you_. You’re not allowed to do that.”

“I can do whatever I please. At any rate, this is different. I was only trying to... save _you_.” You choke a little, and she sits up in your arms, tucking your hair behind your ears so she can kiss you on the forehead.

“Hush,” she says without taking her lips off your skin, and you can feel her smile. Like a chain reaction, you smile too. You tip your head forward and rest your forehead on her chest in turn, your horns framing her neck. She coos into your hair.

And then there is a noise. A soul-rending, aural-clot-ripping noise that makes the both of you scream and clutch each other tighter. Peace and silence are a long-forgotten dream, rent asunder by something so, so much louder than even the stirrings of the Glub you once heard. Your screams are lost in the sound that seems to go on forever.

It stops as quickly as it started, leaving your heads ringing and both of you gasping for breath. Both of you start to speak at the same time, your words running together - and then stopping again when your vision is swallowed by a green flash so bright you forget what sight ever was. Fortunately, this lasts only for a moment before it fades to the dull green glow always visible in the bubbles.

Neither of you speaks now, waiting for the next sensory onslaught. When none comes, you tilt your head up to stare into her face. Olive tears are pouring down her cheeks.

“You’re crying,” she whispers, and you bring your hand to your own cheek; your fingers come away blue. She frowns and sniffs at you. “...no, that’s... blood.” She pulls her arm out of her jacket and wipes your face clean with the sleeve. You try to do the same with your hands and end up making a bit of a mess of her pretty face. You cup her cheeks amidst the blood smeared in your handprints and you just smile at each other.

“What _was_ that?” you ask her. “It sounded like some sort of explosion.”

“Let’s go see,” she suggests. You stand up, swinging her up onto your shoulders, and she kicks her legs rhythmically against your chest and holds onto your horns while you make your way to the edge of your now-shared bubble. Travel within a dream bubble took both of you a while to get used to. It’s not how much you move your legs that determines where you go, it’s where you are _trying_ to go, and exiting the bubble entirely requires some mental gymnastics. But soon the two of you are standing where the Land of Caves and Tea fades into the black of the Outer Ring, smooth rock giving way to void. You look around. As far as you can see, nothing is different - hazy shapes of other dream bubbles in the distance, vast tentacles looming even further out, the dot of the Green Sun shedding its sickly light on all the dreaming dead. You forged your way through this stark landscape once already, and you don’t plan on reliving that experience.

“There does not appear to be anything here.”

“Maybe it was a solar flare or a bomb or something!” She kicks you in the sides with her heels. “Come on, let’s go see!”

“I am _not_ taking you out there, Nepeta. The Outer Ring is dangerous.”

“But I want to _seeeeeee_!”

“We are not going out and that is final.”

“Oh, _fine!_ Jerk.” You turn around and start to walk back to your tea set. She squirms and flails and keeps kicking you, but seems content with arrangements anyway. You hum to her while you walk. “Hey, what’s that?” She tugs on a hank of your hair; you have to turn all the way around to see where she’s pointing, and even then you can only see a distant shape approaching at a dead run. When you start walking towards it, it stops suddenly, then jams its hands into what you presume to be its pockets and continues at what it must think is a casual saunter. It looks rather like there’s something lodged in its waste chute.

“Who _is_ that?” she murmurs, straining on your back to try and get a better look. “...no , it can’t be...”

“’thup,” Sollux says when he’s close enough to hear. His two-tone glasses are teetering on the tip of his nose, leaving his white eyes visible. “How are you guyth doing?”

“What are you doing here, lowbl - “ You bite your tongue. “Captor?” Nepeta is silent.

“Oh, you know, just dead like the retht of the folkth around here.” His cocky smile falls, then vanishes entirely, and he yanks his hands out of his pockets to run them through his hair and clutch his head. Mustard-yellow tears suddenly appear in the skin of his cheeks and forehead, and they drool blood down his face as he shakes. His teeth look to be dangling by mere threads from his gums. “Shit, shit, I’m _dead_ , I’m fucking _dead_ , I - “

  


“Stop it.” Nepeta leans so far forward you have difficulty keeping your balance. “Stop it, Sollux! I... how did you...” Her voice trembles. “Is everyone else...?”  


Sollux looks up, the long yellow rents his claws have dragged down his face blinking away like rain flicked off eyelashes. When he speaks, all his teeth are exactly where they should be once more. “Everyone elthe?”

“...are they dead? I - did Gamzee - “

“Gamthee?” His eyes widen. “Oh! Oh, shit, I... no. No. After he killed you two, that wath... pretty much it. KK calmed him down, and... and everyone elthe ith jutht fine, Nep. Well, ecthept Vrithka, but... that wath a meth from the beginning, and...” He blinks a couple of times.  “...were you really worried about uth?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she says, and dismounts your shoulders to stick a three-point landing, the tail of her outfit thumping down. “I thought me and Equius messed up, and Gamzee was going to go off and kill everyone, and we’d have won all for nothing, and I couldn’t even save my _moirail_ and I’m a _giant failure_ and...!” As you and Sollux watch - you in horror, him in something that looks more like dismay - she bursts into tears, and olive blood bubbles and roils up from underneath her hair, chunks of skull flaking off like a bad sunburn and dropping onto the floor with uncomfortably wet plops. She looks just like she did when you first came to her here. You embrace her as quickly as you can and stroke her hair, ignoring the blood soaking your hands.

You will _not_ join them in their reminiscence. You do not want to remember the garotte around your throat, the feeling of all your failures rushing back to surround you and leaving you helpless, staring death in the face and unable to move. You gave in, but you _will not_ give in again. There are things so much larger than you, so much more important, and you will never crawl into the mindless safety of whips and chains again - and if you do, it will be on _your_ terms. Yes, you and Nepeta are dead, and Sollux too, now, but that never stopped Aradia.

“Nep,” Sollux is saying, grimacing as he stares at another chunk of hair slide down from her scalp. “Nep, thtop, it’th alright, everyone’th got a plan if you’ll jutht calm down... you’re thtarting to freak _me_ out, come on...”

“Nepeta,” you whisper to her, your free arm holding her around the waist. A bit of sweat starts to soak through your clothes, but you manage to catch yourself in time and banish all thoughts of impropriety from your mind. “Nepeta, listen to him. I am... we are _both_ here for you.” Sollux glances up at you and smirks, snaggletoothed fangs poking past his lips. “We can do this. Together.”

Her tears stop in highly undignified wheezing honks, and the head wounds vanish as quickly as did Sollux’s. She rubs at her eyes for a little bit, and you and Sollux let her. “Okay,” she says laboriously when she’s finished. “Okay, I think I feel better.” She sniffles. “Thanks.”

“Thank fuck, I wath thtarting to wonder if you’d ever thtop crying.” Sollux punches her lightly on the arm. You _almost_ reach out and crush his skull between your palms, but you manage to stop yourself as you watch Nepeta hit him back, just as lightly, then giggle.

“Jerk,” she says, fondness in her voice. “I’m _surrounded_ by jerks. I’m going to have to find a new dream bubble and make my own fun.”

“I think you will find it is neigh impossible to get rid of me.”

“Neigh? Theriouthly?”

“I do not make fun of the delicacies of _your_ speech.”

“ _Delicathieth_. You are _thutch_ an athhole, Equiuth. Hey, I have a fucking idea, let’th all get off the dickwad train for two minuteth and hear about thith _great plan_ that we’re all going to do.” He plops down in the sandy dirt - since he arrived, the heat in your bubble has increased by a few degrees, and when you glance behind yourself you see flickering flames in the distant cave mouths; you suppose this is now the Land of Little Caves and Fire - and crosses his legs. You and Nepeta sit down across from him. In the interests of decorum, she stays out of your lap, instead sitting close to your side and leaning her head on your shoulder.

Sollux draws in the dirt with his finger. Unfortunately, all of what he draws is circles - a cluster of them to one side, half-encircling a much larger one. When he finishes, he stares down at what you presume he intended to be a helpful diagram and scratches his chin. “Wow, thith maketh no fucking thenthe. Okay, thith ith a map. Here - “ he points to a more oblong circle, farther away from the cluster - “ith the ectobiology lab. You remember that, right?”

“Correct.”

“Uh huh.”

“Now that’th here.” He draws a large arrow from the lab to the largest circle sitting off by itself. “I, uh, moved it. With my thtupid mutant brain. That’th how I died.”

“You _mooved_ the ectobiology lab? Why did you not do that sooner?”

“I didn’t have a _beacon_ before that, athhole. Thith big thing here ith the Green Thun. Imagine I thaid that greened for confuthing shit. We were thtanding there on the outthide of the lab when we... uh, everybody elthe, thinthe I wath blind... when they thaw some kind of huge flath in the Outer Ring. I could feel it with my brain, like... a call, or thome kind of beam I could follow to thend uth through the Ring and meet up with the humanth. I did it, but it wath too much for me and I gueth my head blew up or thomething.” His face falls. “...wow, it’s deprething to talk about your own death.”

You reach across the map to put your hand on Sollux’s shoulder, and when you get there you find that Nepeta has put her hand on the opposite shoulder. Sollux looks at your hand, then at hers. He swallows hard and lifts his dirty hands to squeeze the both of yours; you turn your hand to curl your fingers against his palm in the two or so seconds before he wiggles out of you and your moirail’s grip and clears his throat loudly. “Yeah, okay,” he says, rubbing his hand over the lower half of his face to hide what you suspect might be a smile. “Thankth, guyth.”

“It is my pleasure.”

“You’re welcome!”

“Okay, tho, that’th what you guyth mithed, bethideth Terethi killing Vrithka, which I’d bet my thecond thet of hornth would have happened thooner or later anyway. That tieth into the next part of thith, though. Here’th where we are now.” He jabs his finger onto one of the circles in the cluster. “Thith big blob ith all the dream bubbleth. What we are going to do _now_ ith we are going to butht out.”

“Bust out?”

“That’th what I thaid, Tholid Thlitherbeatht. We’re going to get everybody elthe who’th dead, and then we’re going to meet everybody elthe at the Green Thun.” Sollux’s grin spreads wide across his face, and you swear for a moment you see his blank eyes flicker red and blue. He draws an arrow from the dream bubble cluster to the Green Sun. “And then we’ll all be together again, and we can _really_ get thtarted on winning thith game. Are you guyth in?”

 _In_? A chance to redeem yourself, to show your friends that you learned from your punishment and are more than capable of protecting those whose safety you are charged with? You press your green-blood-streaked hand into the Sun drawn in the dirt, curling your fingers. “I am prepared, Captor.”

Nepeta puts her hand on top of yours, her tiny fingers dipping into the gaps between yours. “I’m ready, too! Sitting around in dream bubbles is boring anyway. I want to see everybody again!” She grins, teeth glinting in the green light from outside. “Thanks fur clawming to get us, Sollux.”

Sollux snorts as he enfolds your hands underneath his long, bony one. “Do we have to get into the cat punth?” he says. “Come on, let’th rethcue Tavroth firtht. Then the Lother Brigade can thave the day.”

“Yeah! That sounds _grreat_!”

“I resent the implication that I am a _loser_ , but yes.”

The three of you stand, hands linked, and turn towards the void. The future is ripe with possibility, and from here it looks so easy to reach.


End file.
